The Customer Journey Maestro

If you can't beat them, join them. I have resigned from my own career as a freelance writer because AI is replacing people like me, and there's no point in waiting around for the inevitable. Now I'm focused on learning how business people can leverage AI. I don't yet have a service to offer around this, but I'm happy to discuss the practical applications of AI anytime.

B2B Strategy Advisor and Consultant

I specialize in building and executing content marketing strategies for companies seeking sustained revenue growth. My process is to create a customized messaging framework (aka, “brand story”), develop a content strategy and calendar, and execute the content strategy by building a content team and/or writing brand content.

Fractional Content Director

I love to write and create content of all kinds. My broad and deep experience across sales, marketing, and customer success gives me a unique perspective and the ability to write compelling content for just about any industry. My approach is to get the inside truth from the people behind each story, and I don’t believe in taking shortcuts. I write and publish for your customers, to engage them, educate them, and compel them to take action. The SEO stuff comes along for the ride. Let’s talk about your freelance writing/content needs.

Freelance Writer

I help B2B companies build and execute modern marketing strategies focused on customers.

B2B Marketing Advisor

Hire me on a full-time or part-time basis to up-level your go-to-market strategy. And it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Go-to-Market Strategy Advisor

Your customers have their own Journey that may not match your Funnel or Flywheel. If you want to understand their journey and be there when they need you, that takes work. Designing a customer experience that builds trust, now that's another level entirely. I'm here to help - on your journey.

Customer Journey Guide

On-demand expertise in marketing strategy, demand generation, content marketing, social media marketing, product and customer marketing, sales and marketing alignment, and customer success.

Fractional CMO/VP Marketing

CMO for Hire

Are you in transition? Starting from scratch or making a pivot to a new revenue growth strategy? My Virtual CMO services provide proven expertise to help you jumpstart sales, marketing, and customer experience prior to hiring executives and staffing departments. It's a low-cost, low-risk way to get the strategic advice you need.

Virtual CMO

Riptide Business Press

Ed Marsh and I have written a book, titled Common Sense Revenue Growth, that helps CEOs understand the digital and consumer disruption facing them today and develop plans to grow in spite of those challenges. Buy the book at www.commonsenserevenuegrowth.com.

Author, Podcaster and Consultant

Kuno Creative

Co-owned one of the first and most successful inbound marketing agencies, Kuno Creative. Grew the agency from a handful of talented marketers and designers to a 50+ person agency with clients ranging from national healthcare and technology companies to international consortiums and manufacturing giants. Specialized in marketing technology and sales enablement - helping companies fix leaky funnels and sales pipelines via strategy, marketing automation and optimized CRM utilization. Please visit Kuno's website, www.kunocreative.com for more information, or follow me on LinkedIn.

EVP and Co-Owner

Awakening Technology Company

Developed corporate websites from scratch using HTML/CSS, then created a proprietary CMS for creating client sites backed by a SQL database using ASP.net and later, Ruby on Rails.

Web Developer

Zydeco Energy

Independent oil and gas exploration company in Houston, TX. No longer in business.

Executive Vice President and CTO

INEXS

Exploration Geophysicist

Raytheon - GeoQuest

Product Marketing Specialist

Shell

Research professional working in electron microscopy for Shell Research and in geophysical interpretation research for Shell Exploration and Production.

Research Geoscientist

B2B Marketing Strategy Advisor With Company, Agency, and Freelance Chops

I retired in 2017 from a 40-year career, mostly in sales and marketing, for a variety of energy, manufacturing, and software companies. My penultimate position was co-owner of Kuno Creative, a digital marketing agency and one of HubSpot's first agency partners. My contributions continue as I seek to help other agency owners, professionals, and free-wheelers navigate their way through gnarly challenges in business and life.

John McTigue

Fullfunnel.io

At Fullfunnel.io we are growing B2B companies with long and complex sales cycles since 2006.

We were and still are “in trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, and bring to the table our 30+ years of combined experience and knowledge.

I've been selling and marketing B2B tech and services since 2006. 

What makes Fullfunnel.io different?

1. Ins and outs of selling to enterprise

Coming from the mid-market and enterprise world, I know all the ins and outs of selling to these segments: the research and evaluation processes, decision-making procedures inside the buying committee and the approval workflows.

We’ve been there, done that, and know how to generate opportunities with these segments and influence the decision-making processes.

2. Niche experience

While we could help many B2B business, since 2007 we focus exclusively on two verticals: high-value B2B tech (enterprise SaaS, blockchain technology, hardware) and service-based companies (software development, consulting, cybersecurity, DevOps as a service, etc).

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge.

3. Knowledge transfer and in-house operations

We believe that the real growth can only be driven in-house. You need to have people who are in the trenches every day, talking to customers, experiencing the sales hurdles, refining the messages and positioning.

We join your team as external marketing advisors, provide consistent support and training including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack and process maps.

As a result, you get an evergreen in-house growth engine.

Co-founder

Trenches - B2B marketing community

Trenches — a community created by B2B marketers for B2B marketers who are in the trenches every day getting their hands dirty in growing B2B companies with high ACV and long sales cycles.

We talk about ABM (account-based marketing), marketing-sourced pipeline, demand generation, lead nurturing, GTM strategy, buyer’s journey, and all other hot topics that are ignored in the sales communities.

Community is FOREVER FREE.

Co-Founder

6-Week ABM Playbook

An actionable account-based marketing playbook and training to consistently land sales opportunities with your dream clients in 6 weeks or faster. 

Cut through the noise and get busy decision makers to respond to your campaigns without spammy outreach, wasting money on enterprise tech stack or expensive ip-based advertising, and significant shifts in the company’s organization.

The account-based marketing strategy and campaigns we are sharing in this playbook can be executed by a team of 2 people (1 marketer + 1 sales) on a Ramen budget.

Author

Scale XL

Helping B2B entrepreneurs install a reliable process to predictably fill their pipeline with high-value clients. 

Scale XL process addresses the 4 critical challenges of client relationship building:

1. TARGETING: identify, target and engage with more of YOUR business’ ideal potential clients, not someone else’s. 
2. ATTRACTING: define, create and communicate compelling messages that cut through the noise and clearly establish your business as a natural answer to your ideal potential client’s problems.
3. QUALIFYING: qualifying which prospects are ideal for YOUR business and which of them are ready, and then applying different processes to sales-ready leads and those that need nurturing.
4. ROI: fix low return and underwhelming results of B2B marketing 

Scale XL relies on a process to build relationships with more key decision makers in your market by targeting, attracting and nurturing your ideal clients, not someone else’s.

And if your business is anything like 100+ niche B2B software and service companies I’ve helped before, it’s likely that my methodology could help you do just that.

To find out if this process can work for your business, feel free to get in touch here, or visit our website at scalexl.com.

Founder

Lean Startup Circle Brussels

We're a group of entrepreneurs taking lean startup and customer development techniques to practice in our startups. We're ready to talk implementation and share data from our experiments.

http://www.meetup.com/lean-brussels/

Every meetup addresses a different (lean) startup topic (minimum viable products, go to market, sales for startups, customer interviews...)

Most startups fail not because they fail to execute and build their product, but because they fail to build a viable business around it. Lean startup helps us validate our business model as fast as possible. Lean startup is a collection of techniques built around maximizing validated customer learning thought fast Build/Measure/Learn iteration loops.

*The Lean Startup is a trademark and service mark owned by Eric Ries.*

Co-Founder and Organizer

Growth Hacking Belgium

Your new business went online yesterday and you've got a marketing budget of zero. How are you supposed to create a movement around your product? How can you get to your first thousand - or million - customers? Starting from zero, it feels impossible. Enter the growth hacker. You may not have heard of growth hacking yet, but you've certainly used the billion dollar brands built by it: Hotmail, AirBnB, Facebook, Dropbox, amongst many others. This group is for people who want to adopt the growth hacker mindset. It is all about sharing hands-on tactics that bring you results.

Grant Snap

Grant Snap is an online service that helps you get your innovation funded by providing guidance in preparing winning R&D grant proposals.

€375 billion gets granted annually in the EU. Get your share.

Sirris

I help software companies in different phases of product development and innovation:
•	For entrepreneurs: to turn their ideas into viable product concepts by applying customer development and lean startup™ methodologies
•	For companies building product for early adopters: introduce flexibility needed to quickly respond to new opportunities and changing customer requests 
•	For companies shifting their focus from customer to market: to master product management
•	For companies established in a market: to deal with increasing product complexity and how to differentiate through innovation

Account Manager Software Industry

Development activities (middleware components of a distributed data storage system, test management system, framework and tools used for automation of system tests) 

Participating in introduction of agile methodologies in two R&amp;D teams and setting up test automation infrastructure

Senior Software Engineer

Sony

Participating in the transition of an R&amp;D team into a product development organization 

Development activities (several packages of DVB MHP standard for digital television, an integrated environment used for development, execution and automatic reporting of functional tests for digital television)

Setting up a test department (conceiving a test strategy and infrastructure, test specifications/reviews, recruiting, supervising and training of testing personnel)

Full-funnel ABM for B2B brands with 5+ figure deals | Co-Founder @ FullFunnel.io

You need more pipeline that turns into revenue. But:
- Most marketing leads never convert to deals
- ⁠Outbound is in continuous decline 
- All the investments in trendy programs, agencies or tech didn’t move the needle. 

It’s time to try implementing full-funnel sales and marketing programs. 

Why? 

So you can:
- Accelerate this quarter’s revenue while building the future pipeline
- ⁠Convert 5-15% accounts to pipeline
- ⁠Bring marketing and sales teams together to drive the KPI that matters the most: sales velocity. 

We helped dozens of B2B tech companies implement full-funnel marketing and sales programs with 10%+ account-to-pipeline ratio. 

We will take your team by the hand and together, implement a scoped pilot program with clear milestones to prove the key KPIs, before investing in operationalization and scaling. 

To learn more or ask me anything, connect with me here or visit our website at fullfunnel.io



Vladimir Blagojević

What is ABM?
How out industry completely messed it up.

It all started with ABM platforms selling the enterprise pipeline miracle:

-Buy an ABM platform
-Get a list of dream accounts from sales
-Launch programmatic display ads
-Build dynamic landing pages where the account name and logo will be automatically changed based on the domain or IP
-Create personalized outbound cadences

Easy to launch. 100% measurable. 0 work from sales.

The hype was picked up by many marketing agencies with junior marketers who NEVER had an experience of working, selling, or even talking to Enterprise B2B buyers.

They saw a new "predictable revenue model" that could be labeled as a high-ticket service. You just need to sound smart.

Technically, what I described above can be defined as ABM, because the accounts and the personalization is there.

The problem?

It's very different from how enterprise B2B buyers buy.

The facilitation of that model created a false expectation that ABM is 100% marketing initiative where sales, product, CS, and subject-matter experts should do nothing.

It 100% matched executive expectations because it is just a small upgrade of a lead gen program their company ran for the last decade.

It doesn't require any change management, while in reality it does!

ABM is a cross-functional program that requires significant change management:

- Having an engaged marketing leader who is willing to drive change.

- Incorporating ABM in your Go-To-Market strategy, not creating a new, siloed function

- Structuring teams from horizontal silos to cross-functional operations: marketing, content, client success, sales (SDRs and AEs), subject-matter experts & product

- Changing KPIs from MQls and SQLs to account engagement, penetration, progression, pipeline value, velocity, and revenue, and ask both teams to track them regularly

- Adjusting sales processes to run account research, full buying committee mapping and regular engagement, leveraging marketing initiatives and content for nurturing, using 1st party and 3rd party signals to add value to the conversations and facilitate opportunity creation

- Readjusting content strategy from "SEO-first" to "buyer needs first"

- Investing A LOT in brand awareness by engaging industry thought leaders, communities and partners via educational thought leadership programs

- Creating account plans based on 1st party research insights, not generic GPT research

- Having regular planning and review meetings

When many companies hear what change management is required to make ABM work, they run away from it. And it's their choice.

Some of them prefer to pay for a miracle than to learn the lesson the hard way.

But just a few take the blue pill and make the necessary changes.

The success of ABM lies not in your stack or budget, but in making necessary changes, setting up cross-functional teams, adjusting their KPIs, and enabling them to focus on meaningful account engagements.

Full-Funnel ABM and Demand Gen For B2B Companies w/ High ACV | Co-Founder @ FullFunnel.io

No VP of Sales ever said: "I expect marketing to orchestrate our engagement playbooks". 
Yet this is what often happens with ABM:

Marketing:

- Creates multiple sales playbooks & engagement sequences
- Designs timeline
- Add best practices

Then, marketing shares with sales 87-pages deck and asks to implement.
One month later: "Sales doesn't use our playbooks and content".

This year we've interviewed two dozen enterprise B2B Saas VP of Sales to dive deeper into the challenges they want to solve with ABM and get marketing hands-on help.

Here are 5 core areas:

1. AWARENESS AMONG STRATEGIC ACCOUNTS

Awareness is not created by running more ads, drip personalized nurturing and outbound cadences.

Awareness is not created by creating more AI content nobody is going to read.

Awareness is created through the engagement with ICP ecocystem:

- High-quality thought leadership program with SMEs & execs
- Top-notch events
- Collaborations and direct engagement with the target accounts
- Constant engagement with the communities and thought leaders

2. CONTENT THAT CHALLENGES THE STATUS QUO

Modern B2B buyers don't need one more "How to cut your costs" whitepaper. Modern buyers want to see:

- Industry trends and stats
- Concrete practical examples and best practices: dashboards, workflows, templates
- How to challenge an internal inertia and status quo

In most cases, sales don't use marketing content because it doesn't fall in any of these categories. 

3. COMPLETE ACCOUNT ENGAGEMENT

Most organizations use lead handoff as a default function:

MQL generated -> assign to SDR.
Webinar signed up -> Assign to SDR

In 2026 to cut through the noise you need to have a holistic visibility:

- Who engaged with what content and ads
- What were historical interactions
- When was a spike in high-intent page visits
- Which events buying committee members has attended

This way sales move from desperate pitching to meaningful 1-1 account planning.

4. BUYER ENABLEMENT

You don't win deals with fancy pitch decks. You win when your Champion can sell your product at the next internal meeting.

Sales can create business cases showing challenges, cost of inaction, and recommended solutions.

But they need marketing's help with:

- Product screenshots that address specific buyer questions
- Relevant customer testimonials and references
- Data snapshots

5. CLEAR MESSAGING

Nothing frustrates sales more than prospects asking: "But what exactly does your product do?"

--- 

In many organization, sales ignore marketing, don't buy in for joint programs like ABM, and gate-keep access to customers. 

How to fix this:

- Make both functions revenue-responsible
- Get fundamental alignment on GTM strategy (ICP, buyer journey, value prop, metrics)
- Fix knowledge gaps through joint planning, involvement of SMEs
- Define a small pilot team on one market/vertical
- Run regular pipeline review meetings during the pilot
- Document and share results before scaling

Why Sales Ignore Marketing

Accounts that fit your ICP ≠ buying intent. Instead of wasting SDRs' time and ads budget, segment your accounts into three lists:

1. CLUSTER ICP
= Vendor unaware + Product need unknown

🎯 Goal: Build brand awareness at scale
📢 Marketing: Cluster-based demand gen
🤝 Sales: light touch, <10% of effort (e.g. connect with DMs and Champions)
📊 Opportunity likelihood: <5%

2. FUTURE PIPELINE
= Vendor aware + Product need unknown

🎯 Goal: Validate product need & nurture
📢 Marketing: Cluster-based demand gen, feature in content
🤝 Sales: multi-touch, 30% effort (progressive profiling, connect with buying committee, trigger-based engagement, invite to ABM events...)
📊 Opportunity likelihood: <30%

3. ACTIVE FOCUS 
= Vendor aware + Product need evidence strong

🎯 Goal: Sales opportunities
📢 Marketing: Personalized content, interviews, gifting
🤝 Sales: 1:1, 60% effort (multi-threaded engagement, personalized offers, strategy sessions...)
📊 Opportunity likelihood: High

----

The impact when you align your playbooks to this routing:
→ SDRs stop wasting time on unaware accounts
→ Stop irrelevant personalization 
→ Ad spend has higher returns
→ Marketing-sourced revenue increases
→ You build future pipeline while accelerating this quarter's deals

Industry-based ABM v.s. Use Case-Based ABM. 

If your product has multiple use cases, stop targeting industry verticals, and start targeting clusters.

VERTICAL-BASED ABM 

Most ABM programs create vertical-based list, messaging and content. 

But if those accounts have different use-cases and challenges, you risk ending with content and messaging that's either: 
- Irrelevant to the majority of accounts you target
- Generic, “common denominator” messaging that doesn’t differentiate you and doesn’t address the highest priority need

CLUSTER-BASED ABM

Cluster: group of companies with a similar challenge/use-case, despite their tier or vertical.

With cluster targeting you can:

- Cut through the generic noise with messaging, content and case studies that address the highest priority need that's top of their mind
- Differentiate in a way that matters to them (by showing how you're supporting that use-case better than competitors)
- Focus on accounts with a high probability to become a sales opportunity instead of just chasing vertical Tier 1 accounts

EXAMPLE 

As an ABM lead for Hubspot, I might create an ABM program for B2B SaaS companies. After all, they all need sales and marketing tools. It’s also helpful to have industry related assets, case studies and messaging. 

But different SaaS companies have different buying triggers: 

- Switching from a legacy system, because they lack functionality and integrations
- Companies that want to start ABM but their CRM/marketing platform don’t support it
- Startups that outgrew their separate siloed tools

You can already see how each of these use-cases deserves completely different messaging. 

---

Once you've defined the clusters, the next step is mapping accounts to them.

Here is how.

1. Export all your won deals and segment them by use-case

2. Group all accounts by use-case and compare revenue metrics 

- Revenue
- Average deal size 
- Sales cycle length
- Lifetime value 
- # of successful case studies 

You'll be able to make an unbiased decision which clusters have a higher priority.

3. Select a top cluster aligned with your goals and run deal analysis 
- Top 5 clients by LTV/ACV
- Top 5 fastest deals
- Recent 5 lost deals

4. Extract patterns

- Firmographics
- Technographics
- Buying committee structure
- Won and lost reasons
- Signals and account insights that signal the specific use-case

5. Develop a cluster ICP with qualification & disqualification criteria

--- 

Now you can build a highly targeted list of accounts that are more likely to convert into pipeline and be a good fit, and align your program with their high priority needs. 

We recently published results and a breakdown of four programs where a switch to cluster-based ABM generated $7 million in pipeline: 
https://lnkd.in/dZWKNAbC

What's marketing role in sales outreach and engagement?

A VP at Snowflake got this question at a sales summit:
"How can a rep get your attention with cold outreach?"

His answer: "You can't."

"I don't trust cold outreach. But if someone I trust vouches for the solution, I'll take a look."

This is the reality for most enterprise buyers.

They ignore cold outreach, skip your ads, filter out your nurture emails.

But they listen to their team, peers and trusted industry voices.

That's why your ABM team can't just target buyers.
(and why marketing needs to own part of the engagement)

Here's how to engage the entire ecosystem around your buyers:

1. Peer-to-peer multithreading

The other day I heard from a VP of Sales: "it's hard for a young SDR to get the attention from a senior executive".

Their solution? Their CEO and CMO regularly share thought leadership insight on LinkedIn, and book senior executives as guests on on their podcast.

2. Non-decision makers with influence

Back to the Snowflake VP: "The best way to get my attention is to have my team bring something to me."

Executives rarely care about the tactical problem your product solves.

Here's how it works: A power user experiences a problem daily (e.g. losing candidates to poor hiring experience). That problem impacts a business objective the executive does care about (e.g. slowing market expansion).

You engage the power user. They bring it to their boss when the problem comes up. 

3. Industry peers

People trust their peers more than they trust vendors.

Our buyers mention they discovered our content because someone from their network engaged or shared it. Often someone who will never buy from us.

The more you're present and connect to people from the industry, the more your brand or content get recommended.

4. Industry voices 

These can be leaders in renown companies, leaders from technology partners, or even local "micro-influencers" known in a city or a region.

We regularly host partner webinars, local partner events in target locations, and run an annual summit with people respected by our buyers. 

5. Niche media and communities

Event organizers, industry media companies, communities and podcasts. 

♜ Arthur Castillo shared: "The best community sponsorships weren't standard packages. They were custom programs: co-hosting research, integrated campaigns, or bringing community members to our dinners in key cities."

--- 

Cold sales outreach won't get you in the door with senior buyers.

But when the whole team builds relationships across the ecosystem, you become known, and increase the chance of ending up in their consideration set.  

That's the shift: marketing isn't just generating leads and providing air cover.

Marketing creates trust, presence, and recommendations in the networks your buyers already rely on.

P.S. Andrei Zinkevich and me are breaking down the role of marketing in ABM on our next Full-Funnel Live: 
https://bit.ly/48azQnB

Why do sales ignore marketing? 

I many orgs, sales ignore 
- marketing leads
- content
- webinars 
...

Sales don't buy in for joint programs like ABM, and gate-keep access to customers. 

In many orgs, marketing cannot even access the CRM. 

Why? 

1. Self-perpetuating lack of trust 

From sales' perspective, marketing activities don't seem relevant for their quota. 

Many have tried collaborating without results: leads that never respond, campaigns with no pipeline. 

So they stop giving marketing a chance. But no B2B program works without collaboration. 

And so the vicious circle perpetuates.

2. No skin in the game 

Marketing campaigns are often not tied to revenue. 

Sales have quota pressure and outbound KPIs. Any new program feels like a burden that distracts from their primary goal. 

This goes even more extreme when sales miss their revenue quota, while marketing celebrates hitting MQLs.

3. Self-perpetuating lack of customer knowledge 

Content made for sales gets ignored by them as it seems irrelevant. 

This happens when marketers don't have in depth, first-hand customer knowledge.

But unless sales provide this insight, or facilitate access to customers, this problems perpetuates, too. 

4. Not understanding what sales need 

Most marketers don't interview sales about their priorities and challenges. 

But without showing how our programs can help with top priority challenges, they seem irrelevant. 

5. Lack of clarity 

Most marketing initiative get rejected because of one reason:

Lack of clarity.

E.g. if we want sales to engage buyers of a target account: 
- Validate: is it a good fit and are signals and engagement this account shows relevant?
- What exactly do we expect them to do? Ideally, plan the actions together: what exactly should sales (and what will marketing do)
- How these activities lead to sales meetings, pipeline and revenue

But even that won't work, if we don't solve the next one: 

6. Naive approach to change management 

Have you ever seen anyone change just because you asked them to? 

I've seen many marketers create playbooks, content, messaging and just expect sales to use them. 

People change when they
- recognize the current approach isn’t working
- the problem is worth solving
- see a clear, achievable path forward

And in case of sales, they believe demonstrated results by other sales people much more than any presentation. 

--- 

How to fix this:

- Make both functions revenue-responsible
- Get fundamental alignment on GTM strategy (ICP, buyer journey, value prop, metrics)
- Fix knowledge gaps through joint planning, involvement of SMEs
- Define a small pilot team (1 marketer + 1 SDR) on one market/vertical
- Run regular pipeline review meetings during the pilot
- Document and share results before scaling

--- 

Tomorrow Andrei Zinkevich and I will go live to share simple solutions to fix marketing and sales collaboration:

https://lnkd.in/duEsttZ2

Do reps even matter, if 80% B2B buyers buy from vendors they preferred BEFORE contact with sales? 

Here's what Jon Miller says (quoting Kerry Cunningham's update of 6sense's B2B Buyer Experience Report for 2025):  

1. SALES RELATIONSHIPS AS BRAND AWARENESS 

Reps are a critical part of building your brand preference and awareness. 68% of buyers *personally knew a seller* from the winning company before the buying process began (Kerry’s research).

We see this over and over again. The teams who involve salespeople early in the buying process always see way better results from their programs. 

2. PREVIOUS VENDOR EXPERIENCE > BRAND AWARENESS

95% of net-new wins came from *existing vendor relationships* - not just brand awareness. 

For new business deals: 
- 48% already bought from that vendor
- 13% used the vendor at a prior company
- 34% evaluated the vendor (but didn't buy)

And get this: less than 5% had no direct experience but were familiar with the brand.

The disheartening conclusion here: our efforts to build a brand have a very small effect (5%). 

Category leaders - companies with the biggest market share - have an enormous advantage. 

But what should the rest of us do? 

Jon's advice: 
✅ Hire sellers with experience selling to your core ICP
✅ Give them time and air cover to build relationships outside active buying cycles
✅ When you lose a deal, make sure you have complete notes, named champions, mapped stakeholders, and a clear path to reconsideration. Because that "loss" might be the reason you win the next opportunity

I'd add: 

☑ Double down on expansion and renewal programs 

And practically, in your net-new programs: 

PRIORITIZE accounts with: 
☑ Buyers who are a former customer 
☑ Existing relationships 

INCREASE "RELATIONSHIPS AS BRAND AWARENESS" by:
☑ Letting sellers work on future pipeline and relationships, too
☑ Increasing the footprint in target accounts by multithreading 
☑ Involve non-sellers (your subject-matter experts, executives...) with industry connections 

MEASURE:
☑ Don't only measure revenue from won deals, but also relationships, target account footprint, and ALL qualified net-new opportunities (remember: lost opportunities account for 34% of future won deals). 

Because, as Jon puts it, the deals you win next quarter were decided 6 months ago.

"We struggle with 1:1 and 1:Few ABM. We just can't figure out personalization at scale" - VP of Marketing shared on a call (and was laid off a week after). 

Here's the brutal reality in many B2B orgs:

- Teams pressured to "personalize at scale"
- Any "non-scalable" approach is disregarded
- Teams deploy AI research and/or AI SDRs
- Every prospect receives a "uniquely irrelevant message" (Jon Miller)

Teams get blamed. Leaders let go.

Why? 

Because they MISUNDERSTAND what personalization is.

Personalization ≠ "{first}, {some unique insight / signal}" followed by a pitch asking for a call. 

ABM personalization = matching account insights with individual buyer needs across the buying journey.

Here's how we go from manual personalization to personalization at scale.

1. Pick an engaged strategic account

Together with an experienced AE, define:
- Key questions and information you need to know about this account 
- Sources and platforms where you can find that information 
- Run an actual research on that account 

Save as an example of high-quality output.

2. Train AI with proper input

- Deep insights and research about the target ICP segment
- Always request quotes to prevent hallucination and preserve buyer language
- Give AI detailed prompt describing the research questions and sources 
- Show it what 'good looks like' with the example of high-quality output to use as a quality benchmark

3. Make account research a joint responsibility

AI research is complemented by:
- RevOps input on buying signals, engagement and intent data
- Marketing research of industry trends and competitive landscape
- SDRs research of the buying committee, and recent role changes

4. Include insider information 

The deepest insights you gain only from 1-1 conversations.

SDRs and AEs run regular 1-1 engagements with buyers to build relationships, understand where they are in the buyer journey, and their current needs.

5. Create a 360° account view

Create a holistic account dashboard with all collected insights.

6. Create account-specific content, not "personalized templates"

Match content with the buyer journey stages, buyer persona, and current needs.

Sales distributes it manually to target buyers and listen to their feedback.

Save successful examples validated by the buyers (with responses, engagement and calls). 

7. Feed the proven formats to your AI model to replicate them in the future. 

You'll then only need to polish and customize it.

Same principles: deep insight + playbook as prompt + quotes + quality benchmark. 
---
Personalization at scale is only possible when there is a proven playbook in place.

The only way to create the process and quality output benchmarks is MANUAL first. When you see what works, you can scale it with AI.

But it requires JOINT marketing and sales work, not just pushing your VP of marketing to find a solution to "personalization at scale".

ABM ≠ industry & persona personalization. This misses: 
- Actions matching buyer intent & awareness
- Progressive discovery & personalization 

Here's a framework that shows this more clearly. 

1. Level of intent (vertical axis)

- TAM*:  Any company that could potentially use your solution (e.g. My HR solution is used by companies 200+ employees)
- ICP*:  Companies matching your ideal profile (e.g. 200+ people tech companies who are actively hiring)
- Cluster: Priority segment with competitive advantage (e.g. SaaS companies with distributed dev teams, hiring remote developers)
- Need:  Validated problem that needs solving
- Buying: High-priority, can't postpone, actively looking for solutions

(* yes, I know that strictly speaking "TAM" and "ICP" are about fit, rather than intent - but look at my drawing skills, do you think I could draw a 3D diagram?)


2. Level of awareness (horizontal axis)

- Cold: No awareness of your solution
- Aware: Know what you do, no relationship yet
- Relationship: Active back & forth conversation
- Meeting: Discovery calls with buying committee members


3. Aligning actions w/ level of intent and awareness

ANY + TAM → Qualify. Do they fit our ICP?
COLD + ICP → Create awareness
AWARE + ICP → Research to uncover cluster and account insights
AWARE + Cluster → Build relationships, start progressive discovery
RELATIONSHIP + ICP or Cluster → Validate the need through progressive discovery
RELATIONSHIP + Need → Book discovery calls
MEETINGS BOOKED → Discover needs, priorities, stakeholders. Create the opportunity.

(In practice, we use a simpler framework with three lists:
- Cluster ICP: Researched accounts, unaware, unknown need. Goal: create awareness.
- Future Pipeline: Vendor aware, need unknown. Goal: validate need and build relationships.
- Active Focus: Validated need, established relationship. Goal: book discovery calls and create opportunities.)


4. Progressive discovery and personalization 

By progressive discovery, I mean: 
- Account research 
- Progressively gathering insider information, challenges and priorities shared by target buyers via
→ Content collabs
→ Webinar polls/Q&As/registration forms
→ Social and email conversations
→ Transcribed interviews and calls

With each new insight, personalization becomes better. 

--- 

The mistake? Assuming that industry and persona personalization is enough. 

In reality
- Same industry ≠ same challenges. Relevant personalization requires deeper insight 
- Most relevant insights come from buyer conversations 
- Outreach by unknown people gets ignored even when relevant

Customer interviews are overrated. 
Use progressive discovery instead. 


1. Turn natural touchpoints into progressive discovery

Customer interviews = conversations you have with your customers, from the moment they are prospect through the whole lifecycle. 

→ First sales calls with prospects
→ Business case building with your champion 
→ Demos & discussions with other buyers 
→ The moment someone signs 
→ Onboarding sessions with new customers
→ Quarterly business reviews with existing accounts
→ Support tickets and feature requests

Even: conversations you have with prospects and customers on industry events. 

Where you make a difference: 

2. Ask the right questions at the right time

Good conversations always focus on their world, and ask the right question at the right time. 

E.g. 

- Business triggers, problems, how did they discover you → initial discovery 
- Cost of doing nothing → business case building
- Purchase criteria → consensus building & demos with users and buyers 
- Why us → when they sign 
- Value → post onboarding, reviews 
- General "out of buying cycle" topics → buyer research, customer events, social... 

3. Systematically process and develop customer insights

Interviews ≠ Insights. 

Record, transcribe, structure and process the input to get to real insight. 

Regularly review the insight and updates with the team. 

4. Turn the insight into action

Insights ≠ Actions. 

Lots of teams collect insight, and only use it to update their copy. 

You can do much more. Refine targeting, qualification and disqualification criteria, account research process, content strategy, buyer enablement... 

5. Voice of customer

Use their actual words. 

Not your positioning deck. Their language. Their pain points. Their priorities. 

--- 

Thank you Patrick Cumming  for starting this discussion. 

Patrick's workflow is brilliant: mine first sales call transcripts, extract the top 5-7 pains/gains, use their exact words in your ads.
He saw a 40% lift in SQLs with the SAME budget. Just "using their exact words to build ad content". 

Bottom line: customer research is not a project.

It's an essential, evergreen process that includes progressive discovery, structured insight collection and review, and continuously refining your GTM as the market and your understanding of it evolves.

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